ARTS BRIEFING

By Lawrence Van Gelder

Published: November 4, 2003

HIGHLIGHTS

PARIS: LITERARY AWARDS -- A pro-American essay not even short-listed for a prestigious French award for the season's best nonfiction won the Renaudot prize yesterday.. The author, Yves Berger, named last month to be vice president of a government body established to safeguard the French language, described his prize-winning work, ''Dictionnaire Amoureux de l'Amérique,'' as ''a love song to America.'' He said: ''I lived through the German occupation. Freedom could only have come from America at the time.'' He added: ''Anti-Americanism is a national shame. America has never forced its soup upon us; we eat it because we no longer possess the spirit of Gaullist resistance.'' Agence France-Presse also reported that the Renaudot prize for fiction went to Philippe Claudel for his novel ''Les Âmes Grises,'' about the murder of a young girl in France in World War I.

SINEAD O'CONNOR: OVER AND OUT -- Sinead O'Connor, left, says her new two-CD album is her last. Expecting her third child, she is retiring to concentrate on her theological studies and pastoral healing, according to a Reuters-Billboard report from London. The new album, on the Hummingbird label, turns to the Bible for its title, ''She Who Dwells in the Secret Place of the Most High Shall Abide Under the Shadow of the Almighty.'' It comprises unreleased demos, rarities and cover versions with collaborators like Massive Attack, Brian Eno and Donal Lunny, and a live set recorded last year in Dublin.

CHICAGO: NEW ARTS THEATER -- With a ribbon cutting, Champagne reception and inaugural performance followed by a black-tie dinner dance on Saturday evening, Chicago will usher in its new Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance. Situated in Millennium Park, the $52.7 million theater with its 1,500-seat auditorium was built on land leased from the City of Chicago and privately financed by individuals, foundations and corporations. Designed by Hammond Beeby Rupert Ainge Inc., the theater was designed to serve midsize performing arts organizations and developing companies. The opening night program will feature the theater's 12 founding companies: Ballet Chicago, Chicago Opera Theater, Chicago Sinfonietta, the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, Lyric Opera Center for American Artists, Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Muntu Dance Theater of Chicago, Music of the Baroque, Old Town School of Folk Music and Performing Arts Chicago.

GOODBYE, ''URINETOWN'' -- Forced from Henry Miller's Theater by impending construction, the Tony Award-winning musical ''Urinetown'' is to close on Jan. 18 after 25 previews and 965 performances. Last week the producers, who faced the threat of eviction for more than two years, were that told the show would have to leave the theater by Feb. 15 to make way for construction of a 57-story skyscraper. Press agents for the show said that at its closing, ''Urinetown'' will be the longest-running show in the 86-year history of the theater, the original home of Thornton Wilder's ''Our Town,'' Agatha Christie's ''Witness for the Prosecution'' and T. S. Eliot's ''Cocktail Party.''

CAIRO: A SINAI MUSEUM Egypt plans to build a museum in the northern Sinai Peninsula to house thousands of artifacts recovered by Israel when it occupied the region from 1967 to 1980. Muhammad Abdul Maqsud, the director for northern Egypt of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that some 4,500 objects from Pharaonic, Greek, Roman, Coptic and Islamic periods would be exhibited in the $5 million museum to be constructed in El Arish, according to Agence France-Presse. Mr. Maqsud said the museum would also display artifacts recovered in the area after a 1979 peace treaty restored Sinai to Egypt.

FOOTNOTES

In ceremonies on Nov. 17 at Low Library on the Columbia University campus, the pianist Emanuel Ax, left, will receive the Alexander Hamilton Award for distinguished achievement. The accolade, given by the Columbia College Alumni Association, is considered its highest tribute to a member of the faculty or an alumnus. Mr. Ax was a member of Columbia's class of 1970. . . . Arthur Miller's conversation with Mel Gussow of The New York Times, postponed from Sept. 22 because of Mr. Miller's illness, has been rescheduled for 8 p.m. Nov. 19 under the auspices of the Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y.

Photos: Charles Shaughnessy, center, and cast members in ''Urinetown,'' which is closing on Jan. 18 because Henry Miller's Theater has to make way for a skyscraper. (Report, below center.) (Photo by Carol Rosegg)